Career Journal: Do Fancy Job Titles Matter?

Over the years, titles have become increasingly elaborate and fancy. They are no longer simply a way to indicate the role and position of a person within a company.

You may be justified for thinking that a company’s “chief gardener” tends to the office grounds and that a “chief belief officer” works for a religious organization.

But “chief gardener” is also what the chairman of technology firm MindTree Ltd. Subroto Bagchi calls himself. That’s because his role is to nurture the company’s leaders, according to a company spokeswoman.

And retail chain Future Group has a “chief belief officer,” Devdutt Patnaik, who describes his job as making “people believe in the retail religion.” In other words, Mr. Patnaik is a leadership coach and consultant.

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While these particular job titles are rare, human resources experts say that, over the years, titles in general have become increasingly elaborate and fancy. They are no longer simply a way to indicate the role and position of a person within a company.

Today, 60% of Indian organizations play around with titles,” claims Ronesh Puri, managing director of Executive Access, a Delhi-based recruitment firm.

As hierarchies in the workplace matter less than they once did, titles are used to give people importance even when their job description doesn’t change.

For instance, a growing number of people can claim “vice-president” status thanks to the flurry of prefixes that can accompany the title – such as “senior,” “executive” and “associate,” as a way to give the employee a sense of moving up in their career.

These prefixes hold different meanings in companies, and there may be dozens of people with the same title in a company.

Typically, these designations have more value inside the company than outside, says Chaitali Mukherjee, country head of Right Management, a Gurgaon-based talent and career management firm and a part of the Manpower Group.

Consider the Indian bureaucracy. It has a range of secretaries, who are differentiated by prefixes like “special,” “additional,” “assistant,” “joint,” and “deputy.” But a lay person would struggle to figure out whether the additional secretary is senior to a joint secretary or the special secretary.

In corporate India, important-sounding titles are often nothing but “tricks to retain talent,” says Andy Kankan, country head of the Indian operations of Colt Technologies, a Gurgaon-based information technology company.

When companies can’t afford to give employees hefty cash rewards, they instead bestow grand titles that give the impression of a promotion.

Sometimes, new titles are created as new jobs are created, says Saumen Chakraborty, president of human resources at Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd.

For instance, titles like “chief mentor” and “chief diversity officer” are relatively new titles, typically found in younger industries like information technology.

Kotak Mahindra Bank has a group of “chief fun officers”, whose job is to “transform after hours into fun,” according to the company’s website. These staffers help put together festival celebrations, movie screenings and other such events.

There’s a growing trend of companies giving quirky and unconventional titles to their employees as a way of creating an open and friendly work atmosphere.

Head Maven Sandhya Sadananda Gupta says that they wanted to be “refreshingly different.” In another company, Ms. Gupta’s would have been called chief operating officer. Her staff, most of them young, thinks the titles are “cool”, she says, and potential clients are always curious to know what it means. “It’s a great conversation starter,” says Ms. Gupta.

Setting aside the question of what titles really mean, do they even matter?

While fancy titles are a global phenomenon, in status-obsessed India, titles hold an even greater weight – and not just in the work environment.

Experts say that important-sounding job titles may increase someone’s chance of getting a bank loan, securing a place for their children in good schools and even of finding a good spouse, especially if the marriage is arranged.

Mr. Puri of Executive Access says that he is aware of a candidate who once rejected a higher-paying job saying the new job title would have sounded less important than his current one.

Titles can also help reach clients who wouldn’t otherwise entertain the employee, says Mr. Chakraborty of Dr. Reddy’s Labs. An important sounding-title may make the customer feel that the employee has the authority to take decisions in the company.

Human resources experts say that employees are becoming discerning about titles. It is hard to motivate mid- to senior-level employees by just giving them a better title — it has to be accompanied with a better pay and with a more fulfilling role in the company.

A system of giving a titular promotion also risks hurting a firm’s credibility in the long run, adds Mr. Kankan of Colt Technologies. The company risks building a reputation for having employees with titles that don’t match the importance of their role.

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